I am a newcomer here (actually I've been here a few times in the past) and have
been following a few discussion threads quite intently.

I found John Burgeson's take on the creation of soul very interesting:

_Perhaps, just perhaps, the creation of
humans-in-the-image-of-God did not take place as an event -- but as a
process. If one allows that it may be a process, rather than an
event-at-a-moment-of-time, then that process may well have started prior
to both Neandertal and Homo-sapiens_

However I have an objection to this line of reasoning since its implications are
not very comforting. The special, instantaneous creation of the soul is
absolutely necessary, doctrinally speaking. Without it, Christ's death and
resurrection are pointless, since the meaning of sin and specifically, original
sin, as Christian tradition has envisaged it for the past two millennia, becomes
redundant. 'A process' of original sin is completely alien to Christian theology
and Tielhard's ideas are more in line with patheism than Christianity.